Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[CitroJim]

I believe still a thing for large vehicles and busses Steve. I may be wrong there and I believe big lorry tyres can still be re-cut.

Like you, I've not seen car-sized remoulds for years and thought them well obsolete, if not actually banned...

[Zelandeth]

They very much still exist for large vehicles, but I don't think are still readily available for cars.

I don't believe this was really due to them being banned or anything so much as the influx of seriously cheap tyres from China and India just meant that they no longer had a business case. So the days of seeing Colway Radial Remoulds (those always used to be the common ones where I grew up) and such on cars I think are long gone.

Regarding oil, the consensus seems to be reasonably well settled. The original advice was 50:1 from the manufacturer, but 40:1 is the advice the community seem to go by. I think this is that modern oils burn cleaner so you can get away with the oil mix being slightly richer without creating a smoke screen James Bond would be proud of. Regarding type, the advice is also pretty simple. Mineral is fine, semi synthetic is fine, but steer clear of fully synthetic - same reason as avoiding putting fully synthetic oil in older conventional engines that weren't made for it, it seems to attack the seals.

Regarding the smoke these cars are legendary for - yes, she smokes out the neighbourhood when first started up and you're on the choke, but once up to temperature doesn't visibly smoke when driving at all as far as I can tell looking in the mirror (and the exhaust tip is visible in the wing mirror). If she's been idling for a while yes there's a bit of a plume the first time you put the engine under load at some decent revs because the crankcase will have loaded up with oil a bit - no real way to avoid that - but by the time you've got to the top of 3rd gear that has cleared.

[c16rkc]

Wow thats a really cool project, I love the feeling when you get a new project and can see the potential of what you can do

[mickthemaverick]

I was in MK yesterday so I thought I'd drop in to see the Trabby but unfortunately I was out of luck!

MTMO

Nice P6 though!

[Zelandeth]

Yesterday's short update, as interrupted briefly by an ImgBB outage.

I may have been slightly premature in declaring the windscreen wipers to be fixed.



Still a hundred times better than it was when I drove it home when the driver's side wiper would barely clear the rear view mirror.

I can see that the spindles are quite badly worn, so guessing the same is true of the rest of the linkage. The "ca-chunk ca-chunk" soundtrack when the wipers on also supports this theory.

I did find these in the box of bits that came with the car in a ziplock bag.



Which (aside from the random nails) to my untrained eye look like bits of the wiper mechanism. The spindles are definitely less worn than those on the car. So that's a project for investigation sooner than later.

The car is booked in on Monday to have new tyres fitted which will be nice to have ticked off the list.

If I get time today I may go after the carpets with the wet vac again now it's warm enough that any remaining water should at least be in liquid form again.

[Zelandeth]

This afternoon water eviction was the order of the day.

Can you tell which side had been attacked with the vacuum cleaner?



Witness marks from long term dripping make me suspect that the offside windscreen seal may be one of our main suspects.



I'm also somewhat suspicious of the passenger door seal, though hard to say if the water sitting in the bottom of the channel was just condensation as there's condensation all over everything at the moment.

A "small" amount of additional water was removed.



Initially after this I set up my older dehumidifier to help speed up the drying process.



I could tell though that there was still a bunch of water trapped in the sound insulation under the carpets themselves, so when I got a spare half hour later in the day they were also pulled out.

I really appreciate cars where you can do this without needing any tools whatsoever.



As predicted, the felt underlay was absolutely sudden. It is currently hung over the back fence with water literally running out of it.

The carpets have been stuffed in our spare room to dry out. This doesn't feel like a material which will really hold on to moisture.





When the weather is warmer I'll probably attack them with some detergent and the pressure washer.

Again in sharp contrast to Lada where the carpets are the cheapest of the cheap and will disintegrate if you look at them wrong, these are really sturdy. If they were a bit smaller I'd honestly have no reservations about sticking them in the washing machine. I don't have any doubt they would emerge completely unscathed.

Definitely was a good call. No real damage done save for a bunch of surface rust as far as I can see, but it feels like the clock was *definitely* ticking.





Whatever is under the top coat is black so it looks worse than it is. No holes I can see other than those which are meant to be there and even the worst looking bits shrugged off the screwdriver test.

I'll give this a scrub down with the wire brush a good dousing with Vactan then some protection once the car has dried out. Still need to get the mat out of the boot but ran out of daylight today.

Don't think there's much mileage in drilling holes or anything as the carpet underlay is going to act as a giant sponge once refitted anyway - tracing and sorting the leaks I think needs to be the main mission.

In other news, doesn't this look better than a gaping hole in the dash?



I do have what I believe to be the original radio, but sadly don't seem to have the knobs to go with it. I'll have more of a dig around though, and if the turn up I'll refit the original one.

[Zelandeth]

Today's mission? Apparently largely based around the eviction of zip ties.

While most areas seemed a good deal drier than yesterday, there was still standing water in a couple of places, so I added a fan to the equation to get a bit of air circulation going inside the cabin. Even within an hour this had made a huge difference.



It appears that the general answer to where water is getting in after the rain last night is simply "everywhere." So I suspect that a full new seal set for everything may well wind up being on the cards.

Next up was investigating the wobbly and lopsided front bumper. This was particularly noticeable as it bounced quite impressively when the car was idling.



While it was bolted in place on the nearside (albeit not very tight), the offside was making do with a zip tie. Not ideal, even though the bumper really doesn't weigh anything as it's just a bit of plastic. Bolts were replaced after a little bit of letterbox surgery via the indicator hole in the front panel, and a secure and more or less straight bumper is now in place.



Much better.

On the subject of ousting zip ties, I also found my eye drawn to this mess in the engine bay.



Which after five minutes finding a couple of appropriate nuts and bolts was replaced with this far more appropriate looking washer bottle from the box of bits that came with the car.



I don't actually have an electrical feed for the pump at the moment, but it should work fine off the manual pump as it stands. It doesn't leap out at you as soon as the bonnet is opened now at least.

Interesting to see that this doesn't look to be a modern replacement as it does still say made in DDR on it so may well be from A Trabant - though with a 1989 date code, not from THIS Trabant.



In the boot I found the cool air intake duct for the heater which lives between the air blend box and the front panel so that was refitted.



I'm probably going to discover that this overwhelms the blend flaps in the heater when at speed and is something that most people fit during the summer and remove at winter which is why it was in the boot!

Engine bay looks a bit better I think now.





Really is crying out for a good clean though. Especially down in the bottom of the inner wings and such there's about 1/2" of greasy mud.

This really is a strangely proportioned little car in profile.



Based on the rear overhang and such, it really looks like there should be about a foot of additional body behind the front doors that someone has just chopped out, and that the doors would be a good bit longer (which admittedly would make entry and egress a good bit easier, it's a bit of a squeeze through the door if you've got long legs).

While digging around under the seats yesterday getting the carpets out something which surfaced was the lid for the fuse box I've just remembered so I'll need to get that put back in place next time I'm out at the car.

I was made aware earlier this evening that there should be a jacket fitted around the engine cowling to provide some additional sound deadening. Armed with the knowledge that it existed and after a brief web search an idea what it looked like I went and had a rummage in the boot again.

Sure enough this turned up.



Which I'll set about figuring how to fit tomorrow. Hopefully it will be reasonably self explanatory once I'm actually looking at it and the engine.

I don't imagine it can really make a huge difference, but equally I doubt they would have fitted it if it wasn't deemed worthwhile.

[bobins]

Today's mission? Apparently largely based around the eviction of zip ties.

Interesting to see that this doesn't look to be a modern replacement as it does still say made in DDR on it so may well be from A Trabant - though with a 1989 date code, not from THIS Trabant.

As a little bit of useless information, generally speaking - if items had 'Made in DDR' printed on them, they were for the domestic market, if they had 'Made in GDR' then they were for export market - though that is a sweeping generalisation.

[Zelandeth]

Fairly short on time today, and that didn't really coincide with when the weather wasn't being awful aside for about half an hour, so nothing major to report today.

I did however find time to refit the jacket over the engine cowling. It's pretty obvious how it fits in place when you're looking at it along with the car.





We're missing a couple of clips but it's not going anywhere. I'll replace those when I get a chance. One of the bolts holding the air cleaner to the top of the engine was missing it turned out, but that was just an M4 bolt so I was able to just grab a random one out of the drawer of random fasteners in the garage and replace that at least.

I do remain unconvinced of the efficacy of this little bit of fabric in suppressing any perceptible amount of noise, but we'll see I guess!

While I was moving things around, one of the HT leads came off in my hand when I touched it as it wasn't screwed into the clip at the coil end. Have to wonder if that's ever been making a good contact.

On the nearside inner wing there's a pair of wires leading into the engine bay along with the main vehicle loom which have just been chopped off.



I'll need to investigate this in more detail, but I do wonder if these might originally have run to the windscreen washer pump - the wiper control fitted here is of the type which is set up for an electric screen wash pump so I assume there would have been power to it from somewhere originally.

Should be a new set of tyres going on tomorrow, and I'll hopefully also get the tools I need to get the floor cleaned up ready for some paint.

[CitroJim]

And there was I always believing a Trabby was a two-stroke triple... Two ignition coils suggest it's a twin then...

Nicely vibratory compared to a triple - from my long experience of twin cylinder two-stroke bikes..

[Zelandeth]

And there was I always believing a Trabby was a two-stroke triple... Two ignition coils suggest it's a twin then...

Nicely vibratory compared to a triple - from my long experience of twin cylinder two-stroke bikes..

Yep, the Trabant engines were always twins.

The Wartburg used a triple though, so that's probably the one you were thinking of. Likewise Saab's 2-stroke before they dropped it for the Ford V4.

It's smooth enough off idle, though it's almost painfully obvious when you hit the point in the rev band that the exhaust expansion chamber is tuned to!

[Gibbo2286]

Should have known you way back Zel, I took a Wartburg Knight in part exchange once, it had knocking big ends which meant removing the crankshaft and sending it away to be fixed, (pressed in roller bearings), didn't get done and I can't remember what happened to the car, probably went for scrap.
Would have fitted nicely into your collection.

[CitroJim]

Would have fitted nicely into your collection.

I'll expect that's planted a seed in Zel's mind Eric... It'll be his next project

[Zelandeth]

Wartburg is another car I honestly know little about, though engine aside as I recall under the skin they're a bit more conventional than the Trabant, which really was engineered down to be as simplified as possible.

Definitely wouldn't say no to one (which admittedly is true of many cars!), but they've never really been on my radar as something I was conscious of looking out for.

I really need no help finding more projects...this one was never meant to happen!

-- -- --

We made it four days into ownership before I rage quit on the mishmash of budget tyres on the Trabant. Wouldn't have been quite as bad if the two matching tyres were actually on the same axle, but the tendency for it to attempt to rotate clockwise every time you so much as looked at any surface water wasn't going to be something I would put up with. Three tyres had varying degrees of perishing from minor to major present anyway, so time for a new matched set.





Fancy disk brake upgrades, which work very nicely indeed. Nice to have given there's no engine braking available to help with slowing down.



Though we did discover that the wheel from a later car is also something that's part of this as the dish is fractionally different and if you put the older wheels on the front the spokes foul on the caliper.

Noticeable that we have a very, very oily looking gearbox there. Will definitely need to check that the level is correct ASAP, then see if I can figure out where the oil is escaping. Given where it seems to be mostly concentrated I'm tempted to point at the speedometer drive initially. I reckon top up then go after the whole general area with the pressure washer and some degreaser is probably going to be the starting point though as there's no chance of figuring out where it's coming from just now as there's a 1/8" thick coating of slime over the whole thing pretty much.



While the gearbox is very oily, the suspension spring it's very obvious is very much the opposite...I have to wonder when that was last greased.

Same looks to be the case for the rear spring too.



A couple of folks have warned me that the rear suspension trailing arms are quite prone to rust issues so are worth checking. There is a bit of rust on them here but nothing scary. A good wire brush, some Vactan and protection going forward to prevent them degrading further should be fine.



My choice of tyres will surprise absolutely nobody if they've followed my motoring nonsense for more than five minutes.



Uniroyal RainExpert 3s in this case.

Car already feels are more positive, and most noticeably actually brakes in a straight line now - it always pulled slightly but noticeably to the right under braking before the tyres were changed.

As usual the guys there took quite an interest, including the manager of the place who seemed quite taken with it.

Had a few minutes spare when I got back so have continued just picking away at obvious simple to sort things.

There was a random lamp holder floating around down by the fuse box with a ground still attached to it. On a hunch (after I confirmed the lamp in it worked), I went looking for a home for that. Turns out it had been pulled out of the back of the rear window heater switch - so that now lights up again as the designers intended.



Those switches could both do with being dismantled, cleaned and having fresh grease applied to the moving parts as they are really, really stiff to operate just now. Plus the caps could really do with a good clean. The red circular thing to the left of the hazard switch which looks like a push button is actually the tell tale for the hazards, as the number of contacts in the switch didn't leave space for an integrated light in the switch itself. This also now works having cleaned the contacts.

Investigation of the two random chopped wires I found in the engine bay a day or two back revealed exactly as I had expected that they were for the windscreen washers. One is an ignition switched live (which was just floating around uninsulated in the engine bay, nice) and the other is a ground that's switched by the washer contact in the windscreen wiper switch. I'll get that wired up properly again when I have a chance - for now I've ensured that the live wire isn't given an opportunity to find a ground.



Yes I probably should have used electrical tape, but I had that to hand and the two wires are individually wrapped before being overwrapped so it'll be fine. It's not as though I'll be leaving it like that for years and it's far better than it was.

The heater hose that goes into the air blend box is quite a loose fit and you can feel a pretty large amount of hot air escaping around it if left to its own devices. I suspect this may well have been far more snug when it was new, but now it obviously needs some help to make a good seal, so a hose clip was added to that join.



Did refitting the jacket around the engine cowling make any difference to the noise levels? I can't say I really notice anything - but in the same breath the felt underlay from under the carpets is currently in the spare room until I get to the bottom of the plethora of water ingress issues so that's not a fair comparison really. From outside there doesn't seem to be a really noticeable difference though as far as I can tell.

Was out and about after this doing a variety of errands today and definitely am still enjoying the car. The gear shift is so, so much better now it's been greased which really makes a huge difference to how enjoyable the car is to drive.



It's hard to really convey in photos how tiny the thing is compared to most cars. You can zap around mini roundabouts which you basically just drive over in other cars with ease. It's a little over a foot longer than a classic Mini, and the vast majority of that is behind the rear wheels, if that gives a sense of scale folks are more likely to be able to picture.

I still need to finish getting back used to reversing a left hand drive car though, that always takes me by far the longest of anything to get back into the swing of when I get back into one.

[Gibbo2286]

Never had a close look at one despite seeing many in Berlin, quite surprised that it has disc brakes expected it to be drums all round.